Photo finish cameras capture images of a finish line to accurately time stamp when a race participant crosses the finish line and to separate two or more race participants. Line scan cameras have proven useful as photo finish cameras, because the finish line is projected onto the length of a linear detector of the line scan camera. The line scan camera captures a series of consecutive images as race participants cross the finish line and then stitches them together to form a two-dimensional representation of the participants. Since line scan cameras contain only a single line of pixels, signal processing is fast and the cameras can operate at high frame rates. Accordingly, line scan cameras provide high time resolution and therefore accurate timing of events.